Consumers will determine fate of Dodge Grand Caravan

4. As usual, the Dodge Grand Caravan is one of Canada's most popular new vehicles. So far this year, it has racked up sales of 27,538 units sold, an increase of 28.2 per cent.

Handout, Dodge

Fiat Chrysler's twin-minivan strategy will continue, for now

by
Grace Macaluso | January 11, 2016

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The market will decide the future of the Dodge Grand Caravan, said Tim Kuniskis, head of passenger car brands – Dodge, SRT, Chrysler and Fiat, FCA-North America.

“We haven’t announced how long it’s going to be in the market,” said Kuniskis. “We are going to launch the 2017 Chrysler Pacifica, we’re going to have them side by side (in dealerships) for a period of time; then we’ll assess it.”

Back in 2011, CEO Sergio Marchionne announced his intention to eliminate one of the minivan nameplates. Because the Dodge Grand Caravan and the Chrysler Town & Country are so similar, “we’re creating confusion in the dealer network,” Marchionne said. Consumers are having to choose between two minivans that are structurally the same, “so you need to make a brand choice at that point in time,” he said.

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But deciding which minivan to discontinue has been the subject of a long and arduous debate within the automaker’s corporate headquarters. During the 2015 Detroit auto show, Marchionne half-jokingly suggested that if the decision were up to Chrysler Canada CEO Reid Bigland, the twin-minivan strategy would continue indefinitely.

FCA has long dominated minivan sales in Canada and the U.S. largely because the Caravan captures the lower end of the price spectrum, while the Chrysler model competes in the luxury category.

The decision to build the current Caravan model and 2017 Chrysler Pacifica has led to a hiring spree of about 1,000 people at the Windsor Assembly Plant.

In Canada, the Dodge Grand Caravan has long reigned as the country’s top-selling minivan, outselling the Chrysler Town & Country last year by a ratio of about five to one, while across the border, sales between the two brands were almost 50-50. In Canada, the two minivans captured about 60 per cent of segment sales; in the U.S. 40 per cent. The twin vans made up about 11 per cent of FCA’s total U.S. sales, while in Canada they comprised about 20 per cent of the automaker’s overall sales.

Kuniskis said consumers will continue to have a choice between two distinct minivans.

“When we put them in the showroom side by side we will wait to see what the customers choose,” he said. “It’s not like you’re taking a vehicle that was bad and replacing it with a new vehicle. You’ve got two great vehicles and we’re going to let the market decide which one they want.”